


Whispers

by shinobi93



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Shakespeare RPF
Genre: M/M, Marlowe's death, Rumours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality blurs; fiction corrupts. Will hears the words that damn Kit Marlowe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> Influenced by Burgess' A Dead Man In Deptford (apologies for any vague attempts at emulating it) and by having seen As You Like It recently. Any historical inaccuracies waved around with the 'well, there's a lot of gaps in these people's lives' argument, I guess.

When the whispers first get back to Kit Marlowe, he grins and laughs loudly, clapping Tom Nashe (who brought the news) on the back. Will watches and thinks, is it really so ridiculous, that they think you’ve copied your tragical hero and sold your soul to the devil? The rumours have been brewing for long enough, borne of words, words about the atheist Tamburlaine and words about what Raleigh and Northumberland and other of Kit’s associates get up to. It doesn’t take much to link these words and his words together; in fact Will’s surprised it took so long for such whispers to take hold. _Divinity, adieu!_ Atheist Marlowe or Marley or Merlin could just as easily have followed Faustus’ footsteps just a little further, could have abjured the trinity and conjured the devil, sold away his life and damned his soul. Will wonders what these people believe Kit got in return. What he sees, and he sees a lot, is a desperate man, a clever man, a quick-witted and dangerous and hot-tempered man, but not someone who has been given some great gift by Lucifer.

Kit is but a man, with a mortal soul tainted by many things, but not by the devil’s foul hand.

The next time the whispers are told to him, Kit’s laugh is a little too loud, a little too hollow, and Will thinks, maybe he wishes that he did do it, sell his soul that is. In the atmosphere is the strange sense of threat, the unspoken fear that anyone whose business may be deemed questionable could be taken away, and loud Kit Marlowe has got to be on the list (the man grins when Will warns him of this, winking and saying that’s not the only time he’s loud; Will sighs, but he has to agree, and makes jokes of his own). Just as people cannot see the outward, public performance of Kit as being a lie, they cannot separate the man from his creations, cannot see that he can imagine why and how a man would sell his soul without needing to do it himself. It is a dangerous rumour to court, but no one needs to be told that. Part of the play’s thrill runs in this danger, the knowledge that by acting this onstage, the audience is there watching a man cavort with devils and damn himself, exactly as they cannot.

It is true that if there was ever a man to damn himself, Will would put a wager on it being Kit, but that does not mean he believes the whispers. They are the workings of scared minds, of jealous minds, of petty minds. He knows how the play goes: they are proven wrong, their inadequacies exposed, before either a happy resolution or a tragic fall.

The next time the whispers confront Will, it is May and Kit is not there: he is at Scadbury, writing poetry for Tom Walsingham and lying low. Perhaps Will has finally warned him enough that people spreading all sorts of stories about you, only some of which are even true, cannot be good for a man’s reputation. A man’s reputation can strike him dead if it goes too awry. Now, the muttering has got louder, reckless chatter about he who tried his hand at playmaking and damned his soul in the process. The plague hasn’t helped the terror of the devil and magic and anything out of the ordinary. Will has been writing poetry too, scribbling stanzas to try and drown out the voice telling him that this will not end well. The words overcome him, flowing out, knowing their power of distraction. Words to spread rumours, words to write them away. Words to conjure a devil.

Afterwards, after that evening in Deptford has occurred and Will has turned once again to the protective power of the words, he has the time to think, what reckoning was Kit really meant to pay? Over food and drink, as he hears, or something else? The whispers have become comments, spoken in the tavern as people share the news. Lucifer come to claim his soul. Still they are not as loud as Kit himself, and Will hopes they will fade away, lost in the echoes of time. Not a man who damned himself and dealt with the devil, but a man who blurred into his own fictions and who should have whispered when instead he shouted.

There was no deed of gift, no desperate necromancy, no fiendful servant; Will is certain of that. Only Kit Marlowe, and the whispers that followed him wherever he went.


End file.
